


Silent Sincerity

by Twelvefootmountaintroll



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: HP: EWE, M/M, One Shot, Prose Poem, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twelvefootmountaintroll/pseuds/Twelvefootmountaintroll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the HD Project on tumblr for the prompt "light." A series of snapshots across Harry and Draco's lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Sincerity

“Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts.”

Even years later, Harry will be able remember the torchlight flickering on that smug little face. He will remember the yellows and oranges being drawn out of that normally white-blond hair comically slicked back to reveal a forehead with just a hint of a gleam.

Draco will remember it, too. How those green eyes were already enigmatic as the flickering light flashed across them. How their relationship from there on was heatedly passionate, flamboyant, fully capable of burning the incautious, but equally capable of providing the warmth of life, just like the fire crackling quietly in the brackets on the walls.

“You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.”

He wonders later if their fingers would have been singed.

***

Harry’s palms are sweaty and his face is creased. Except it’s not really his face, nor his hands. His eyes are too small and beady, his hairline too close to his brow; his hands hang awkwardly low on arms set on wide shoulders.

He wonders for a moment if Draco knows, but the spoiled brat is far too self-absorbed for that. The green light suffusing the room gives his pale skin a deathlike pallor, but he talks animatedly about the news in the Daily Prophet. Still, it’s a cold kind of animation, one not of passion but assurance, not of desire but satisfaction. Maybe the Lake has chilled his heart.

Draco almost notices, almost catches on. But it’s too easy to believe that Crabbe and Goyle have overeaten when they stumble from the dungeons, complaining of stomachache.

Harry doesn’t really take a deep breath until that gangrene glimmer is truly gone from his skin—his own skin. Even the bluish light of the second floor bathroom is better than the green.

***

The blue light, effusing from everywhere but the dark corners, it seemed, invades Harry’s nightmares in time. It bleaches the color and leeches the life from Draco’s face as he lies on the flooded floor—or is that the blood blossoming from the gashes crossing his chest? It is muddled in Harry’s dream-fevered mind.

He has never seemed more ephemeral than in that moment. His translucently light skin, his stillness in the pooled water—he can’t be a ghost. Ghosts don’t bleed. He can’t be a ghost. 

But the struggling, sluggish pulse in his throat, the shallow expansion of his chest—what could be more ephemeral than these? Ghosts do not fade, as a failing heartbeat; specters do not threaten to become still as a bated breath.

And Harry realizes it was the fleeting life in Draco, not the looming death, that makes him transient. To be a ghost is to be permanent: to be alive is to be ephemeral.

***

Shadows across a distorted face, eyes glittering under swollen lids, two circles of glass set in bent wire frames and a flat, candlelight glare—still, Draco knows. He doesn’t need the candle his mother offers him, nor the encouragement from his aunt. He knows.

Let the darkness hold his secret a while longer yet.

***

Fire, then. Red, soot, ash, and heat. Choking, blinding, searing. Fire.

Draco worries his voice will be lost in the roar of the flames, snatched out of the air by a fleeting, fiery phoenix. Goyle is heavy in his arms. That distant figure, though, glances, turns, accelerates. The flames illuminate his face, set in a rictus of concentration.

Their fingers slip against each other the first time. (Draco can’t tell if it was the Fiendfyre that singed his.) The flames reach and snap and coil closer. But Harry comes back. He comes back and Draco is wrapped against him so firmly he may never come loose.

And Harry’s face is red, radiating heat into the cool, dim corridor. Draco is supposed to be the one with perfect vision, but he has trouble focusing on Harry in the wake of the blinding fire. Harry has always been difficult to pin down.

***

Then Harry goes and gets himself pinned, anyway, against a tree one summer day while walking through the periphery of the Forbidden Forest. In the distance, the restoration of Hogwarts is bustling like a beehive in swarm, but his attention is directed entirely to the foreground. Pinned, yes, but in control: Harry’s the one making demands.

Draco is torn, his arm against Harry’s chest uncertain. The cool sunlight, darting in through the verdure of the canopy, dapples his face and casts it into dramatic relief. His cheeks are too hollow, but his eyes are full of the fire of the sun.

“Why should I?” he asks.

“Because the Wizarding world is going in a new direction. Because you don’t want to become your father. Because the Ministry listens to me.”

Harry makes his demand again. “Let the past be past. Trust me.”

Draco wants to. Those eyes, cast in the same vibrant tones as the forest around them, shaded by those messy, disobedient bangs, implore him more than words ever could. He wants to.

***

The first time had been an accident.

Harry had no idea Draco wasn’t living in Malfoy Manor anymore; he couldn’t have overheard Zabini saying his Diagon Alley address one day in the lift down through the Ministry.

Draco, for his part, had been far too low in Voldemort’s ranks to have been privy to the information of Harry’s London hideout during the War. He had been utterly oblivious to it, in fact.

An accident. A coincidence.

Yet here they are again. This time they can’t pretend, but they find they don’t need to. Sitting on a frost-covered bench in the middle of a moonlit park, silent sincerity is enough.

Draco’s stormy grey eyes reflect the clear, star-filled skies above. And when they part, Harry allows himself one little pretense.

Draco trusts him and takes it up, too.

***

Another meeting. Deliberate—the way Harry’s tongue flicks over his lips, Draco’s lush and soft, denying the winter that has already slipped into spring. The street lamps are dark—a blackout? neither of them cares—and the skies overcast.

Not sitting, this time, but standing. Moving closer. Eyes gleaming in the night.

“Harry...”

“Yes?”

“Never mind.”

Harry ducks his head and his blush is lost to the darkness. But Draco feels it under his fingertips. He doesn’t need light to see the pretense slipping away.

“Harry.”

He’s looking up and their lips are pressing together and the vastness of the night can’t compare to how close they are. How close they stay.

Draco wants to know if their kisses taste the same in the light.

***

The fifth of June: Draco’s birthday. A private celebration at 12 Grimmauld Place. The evening has fallen to dusk, but anticipation has only risen. Fingers twisted together, they walk together to the dark bedroom.

Hands fumble and breath sits hot and heavy on bare skin; clothes lie discarded haphazardly. Where gazes go, tongues and lips and fingertips follow. Bodies are rough and smooth, firm and pliant, begging for touch.

They are pressed together and Harry whispers two words and Draco wants nothing but to comply. He can feel Harry under him, inviting, begging. He wants nothing else.

“Wait.”

A hush, a pause. Their desires aching, colliding, demanding.

“I want to see you.”

Harry’s fingers on his hip are an acquiescence; Draco scrambles in his clothes for his wand, lights the sconces on the walls with a flick of the wrist.

Harry’s eyes meet his. His skin is cast in warm tones from the maroon sheets and the light, his bitten lip calls for Draco’s attention, and a deliberately placed hand makes his need clear.

When, finally, they move in tandem, their gaze is like a red-hot shower of sparks, setting their passions aflame.

***

Laugher smooths the wrinkles of unease. Laughter had been a rare commodity during the War, but its abundance after only made it more precious. Laughter heals and the rift between the Golden Trio and Draco is drawn shut.

The bright sunlight glowing on the verdant grass beneath their picnic blanket puts them all at ease. In the height of summer, the landscape has only grown greener. Above them, the tree providing them with cool, scattered shade shifts in the breeze.

Harry takes a steadying breath: he wants to speak. Draco’s fingers twined with his support him. Hermione sees, understands. Ron is only a second behind. Hermione beams and he gives Harry a crushing hug, pauses, does the same to Draco.

“We’re just happy that you’re happy.”

***

Winter again. The predawn light filters into the bathroom where Harry stands. He’d light a sconce, but he wants to preserve the darkness in the bedroom where Draco lies asleep; he’d shut the door to block the light but for the terribly squeaky hinge. He makes a mental note to find a lubrication spell for hinges; all his others he learnt from Draco.

The ambient light from the midnight blue sky suffuses the while tile. The porcelain of the sink gleams dully and in one corner sits a cup with two toothbrushes. Harry had started using Draco’s toothpaste when he’d brought it over—Draco said Harry’s was too “plebeian” for him to use. But the shower holds two sets of soap and shampoo. Even the laundry hamper has clothes belonging to each of them. Harry smiles.

Draco pads into the bathroom and, rubbing his eyes, runs straight into Harry’s side. But he wraps his arms around Harry’s shoulders and buries his face in the crook of his neck and Harry knows it was intentional.

“What’re you smiling at? It’s too early.”

“When did you move in?”

“Mm. A while back. Didn’t you notice?”

He hadn’t. He smiles again.

***

The room is too big. No, not too big—too empty. Too flat and dull. The curtains block the light and lay a backdrop for the sound of steady breathing. The air itself is blank, scrubbed clean.

Harry’s eyelids are like sandpaper, or sandbags. His hands are tangled in fistfuls of hair, equally to keep him awake and to support his head. The chair is uncomfortable, but he likes that—all the harder to fall asleep in. In the corner of his mind, a rational voice tells the rest of him that sleep would be better. He’ll know when he’s needed awake.

A soft voice. “Harry?”

“Hermione?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. At least let me conjure a couch for you. You aren’t doing any good staying up all night.”

He stares at the floor. She crosses the dark room from the doorway and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“He’ll be okay. I couldn’t be on his surgery team, but I’ve triple-checked every diagnostic. He’ll be okay.”

“How could anyone do this to him? How can they think they’re any better than the Death Eaters they say they hate?”

Hermione conjures a second chair, sits beside Harry, and threads her fingers into his. For a minute there is only Draco’s breathing. Harry lets his tears eke out. Maybe they will wash away the sand.

“Shall I stay with you for a while?”

“Yes.”

She sighs and squeezes his hand.

“He’ll be okay.”

***

Someday, Harry will come down the stairs and sit down for a cup of coffee. It will be in the same mug he’s been using for years, poured from the same carafe full of the same brew Draco blends himself. He’ll note the way the morning sun angles into the room, how the dust motes float through the golden light before it hits that head of dazzling, blond hair.

He’ll pick up the paper and notice nothing special, but he’ll read the articles anyway—he doesn’t need to be at work for a while, yet. He’ll set his hand down, but Draco’s will already be there waiting, and they’ll stay like that just because.

Draco will sip his coffee—black, one sugar, as always—and slowly the sparkle will return to his eyes. He’ll wake up a little more and admire the way the sunlight slants into Harry’s eyes and gives them a definite depth he thought he imagined before.

Harry will turn to the announcements page. An idea will pop into his head and, with typical Gryffindor spontaneity, he’ll voice it. He’ll watch out of the corner of his eye for Draco’s reaction.

Draco will picture far too much white satin and gaudy jewelry and voice a concern. But he’s just going through the motions—they both know.

Harry will assure him there will be no need for any brides to be involved. Draco will smile.

“I’d like that.”

And someday, he will.


End file.
